De Nora | Contract in Japan to recover lithium from used batteries

Milan, 13 March 2025 – De Nora, an Italian multinational company specializing in electrochemistry and a leader in sustainable technologies and the green hydrogen industry, has signed a contract with a major Japanese player to supply a plant for recovering lithium from used batteries. With its technologies, De Nora will contribute to the circular economy of critical raw materials and the energy transition.

De Nora actively participates in the lithium battery production chain, providing electrodes and maintenance services for catalytic coatings, for the manufacturing of copper foils used as current conductors in lithium batteries. The growth in demand for lithium batteries faces the limited availability of lithium and the heavy impact of its extraction in terms of carbon footprint; these factors have led to the development of several processes for the recovery of lithium from used batteries, helping to address the issue of the availability of this metal and the carbon footprint of these batteries.

In detail, De Nora’s Japanese subsidiary will provide a cutting-edge plant to recover lithium hydroxide from used batteries in full compliance with the best international practices. De Nora's “end-to-end” solution, fully integrated into the process of recovering almost all of the raw materials used in these batteries, will offer significant advantages over traditional chemical processes, allowing a 30% reduction in water consumption, almost eliminating the use of chemicals, and minimizing waste production. Once operational, the plant will provide lithium in a form directly usable to produce new batteries, thus ensuring a fully circular and sustainable process and consolidating De Nora's commitment to the energy transition.

The project also confirms the centrality of Japan and Asia in the Group's international consolidation and expansion plan: in 2023 with the expansion of plants in China in Suzhou and in 2024 in Japan in Okayama, where a new production line was inaugurated in June (see press release).